Worth a good chuckle...Gas Prices

[ChickenTracy]

Got this in an email. As funny as it sounds if everyone did it then it may just work. Who knows?

This makes a lot of sense~ read to the end!!!

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.
< /SPAN>
The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000< /SPAN> dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues un til the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says,"there must be something we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time". "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.

And them chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas,that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down..

** Everyone should read this and send it on!< /o>

[mama2littleman]

The analogy doesn't really work. Gas is not a "perishable" item per se. If we don't buy it ... they will just hold it until the prices go up again, or sell it to another market (They are already paying $5.00 - $7.00/ gallon in Europe).

Nikki

[btai]

what we really need to do is have an "alternate transportation week" where everybody in the country makes their best effort to find a non-gasoline(or mass transit) form of transportation for the week. People might get used to it

[FreightTrain]

Originally Posted by mama2littleman

The analogy doesn't really work. Gas is not a "perishable" item per se. If we don't buy it ... they will just hold it until the prices go up again, or sell it to another market (They are already paying $5.00 - $7.00/ gallon in Europe).

Nikki

the problem with quoting foreign gas prices is that it doesnt take into consideration how much of the price is Taxs placed on it by their government

[FreightTrain]

Originally Posted by ChickenTracy

Got this in an email. As funny as it sounds if everyone did it then it may just work. Who knows?

This makes a lot of sense~ read to the end!!!

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.
< /SPAN>
The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000< /SPAN> dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues un til the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says,"there must be something we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time". "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.

And them chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas,that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down..

** Everyone should read this and send it on!< /o>

I dont get it
if a person buys 2 eggs a day seven days a week or buys 14 eggs once a week... he is still buying the same amount of eggs a week
plus he now has to give up his valuable time going to the store every day... then since everyone in town is now doing the same thing, do they now have to stand in outragiously long lines? does the store owner need to now hire more cashiers to handle the long lines? therefore needing to raise all his prices to pay for the added cashiers?


gas:
$10.00 or under 3.5 gallons gives you almost a half a tank of gas in your car??? WOW i bet a full tank doesnt get you far! or it a very very small car!

[sunshine estate]

Yeah, I find holes in the story - the man would have been much better off if he had gotten 3 hens, or a small batch of those quail that lay eggs so well...(coturnix?)

And the analogy for gasoline is for us to use alternative means of transportation and fuels - such as biodiesel...and avoiding the companies that are doing this to us and to our nation

[freeinalaska]

I don't get it. I will still use the same amount of gas a week whether I buy it by the $60 fill up or in $20 dollar increments.

They had that boycott the pump day earlier this year. Same thing there, it makes no sense to fill up a day earlier just so no bought gas that day. We all used what gas we use in the course of our week.

Want to make change really happen? Then reduce how much oil we use. Buy a bicycle, turn the furnace down, heat with wood, or convert to bio-deisel. Change will happen when we use less, not use the same and just buy it in smaller quantities more frequently.

[DixyDoodle]

Naw, as long as there are people who have money to burn and SUV's to buy, gas prices will remain the same. Notice how when prices go up (with the rumour that they will go up even more), people just rush to the stations to fill up....the price drops a bit, but not as low as before...then it's back to normal. Gripe about the price but fill up anyhow. Who has time to fill up with $10 every 3 days? I don't. Not everyone has the luxury of living in town near gas stations to do that.

Your story sounds great, but it won't work. The chickens may keep laying, but the oil companies can slow their outtake of oil. I bet their record profits won't take a dive alongside that though.

I'll just buy gas when I need it and hope the wells run dry. Then I can just ride my horse to work.

[arctichomestead]

I agree unless people drive less, they would just use the same amount of gas but just have to stop more often using their valuable time. The alternate transportation week sounds like a great idea but only if everyone did it. There is huge strength in numbers. It probably wouldn't hurt the actual oil companies though unless we could keep it up for awhile-like several months. The week would send a message but wouldn't really hurt them any. They have already sold the gas to the gas stations and what they have in storage isn't perishable. The gas stations aren't the problem, it's the oil & car companies.
What we need is solar vehicles. Free to use as much as we need and clean. Why can't they do this?? Make the roof and hood solar panels. I guarantee every engineering college in the nation could come up with a version of one.

[Farmer Willy]

The part of the story left out is how the egg distributors had customers in other countries willing to buy all of the eggs the farm could put out. Soon there was a bidding war with one country willing to pay more to get the eggs they wanted, so everyone else that wanted eggs had to pay or not get any eggs. now everyone else had to have eggs, you can't make rutabaga omlets, so everyone else bought eggs for the same price. Soon the chickens were squeezing out every egg they could. Now the price really climbed because people everywhere wanted more eggs than the chickens could lay. Well thought some folks, let's grow more chickens. But the 'no drilling for chickens in my area' crowd ran around screaming how having chickens in their area would ruin their world, so the chicken growers had to live with the flocks they had. In the end all the poor man could do was 1) buy his eggs and hope that the eggs would be in the store when he wanted them 2) that he had the money to afford eggs he wanted and needed and 3) find a way to live without the eggs when 1&2 didn't cut it anymore.

[donsgal]

Originally Posted by btai

what we really need to do is have an "alternate transportation week" where everybody in the country makes their best effort to find a non-gasoline(or mass transit) form of transportation for the week. People might get used to it

It would be nice if it were that easy. When I lived in the city, I liked taking the city bus. But now, living in the country there are no alternate types of transportation available. You cannot even ride a bicycle on our narrow, winding, shoulder-less roads without risking your life at the hands of some 20-something going 65 in a 25 mph speed zone while talking on the cellphone, listening to rap music and eating an order of McDonald's fries.

There is no bus, no train, no community transportation - nada. I would gladly take any other option than filling up my 20 mpg Explorer once a week.

donsgal

[ChickenTracy]

Originally Posted by donsgal

It would be nice if it were that easy. When I lived in the city, I liked taking the city bus. But now, living in the country there are no alternate types of transportation available. You cannot even ride a bicycle on our narrow, winding, shoulder-less roads without risking your life at the hands of some 20-something going 65 in a 25 mph speed zone while talking on the cellphone, listening to rap music and eating an order of McDonald's fries.

There is no bus, no train, no community transportation - nada. I would gladly take any other option than filling up my 20 mpg Explorer once a week.

donsgal

I hear ya!! All we have is hills & it'd take a month of sundays to get to town on a bicycle. No alternative transportation other than your own cars. My DH doesn't even have anyone to carpool to work with because 1 everyone else is closer to the work area 2 they are in totally opposite directions. The email I posted more for a giggle than anything else. Would be nice if there was some way we could reduce the cost of gas. But, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[gilberte]

What needs to be done is to get all the poor people moved into micro apartments near the cities where they can spend any money that they do have making the rich, richer.

This will reduce traffic congestion and urban sprawl in the country so that the rich will be better able to enjoy themselves outside of the squaller of the cities.

Too bad gasoline wasn't rationed with individuals getting equal amounts. I wonder how many huge Suvs and pickups we would see on the road then

[Nancy in Maine]

I too thought that the egg and gas plan wouldn't work because you're still buying and using the same amount of eggs or gas. Even if you buy only 2-3 eggs at a time, you'll still be using the same amount, so how does this back up the eggs in the store?

We live in the country and have to drive a certain number of miles per week to go to work, etc. All we could do that would make a difference is to get a vehicle with better gas milegae. City folks can use public transportation, but even though we have train tracks going right by the house and right by the mill my husband works at, it isn't passenger rail. And the tracks would need $$$ put into them to convert to passenger. I do have an SUV and it hurts to gas it up, but we still need the 4 wheel drive vehicle for hauling. I have been cutting out unnecessary trips.

However, we HAVE cut our dependence on gas/oil by 1/3. How? We burned mostly wood last year for heat and will burn closer to 100% this year. That's what I've been doing for exercise this past week. Got the wood splitter out, splitting 12 cord of wood. True, the wood splitter does use gas, I'll have to deduct that from the total savings.

But what about the poor guys who drive trucks for a living? You can't exactly ask them to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle, and how fair would that be Gilberte, to ration gas to people who really need a certain amount of gas in order to make a living?

[WisJim]

Originally Posted by Nancy in Maine

But what about the poor guys who drive trucks for a living? You can't exactly ask them to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle, and how fair would that be Gilberte, to ration gas to people who really need a certain amount of gas in order to make a living?

We should never had allowed the auto industries to get the huge hiway subsidies that helped drive the railroads out of competition. Also if the truck drivers drove 50 or 55 instead of 75 or 80mph, their fuel costs would drop noticably.

Gas rationing or increased gas taxes may be what it takes to get people to really consider what their NEEDS are instead of their WANTS.

High gas prices aren't going to go away, because oil is a limited resource, and there is ever increasing competition for it worldwide. There are billions of Chinese and Indians who also "deserve" the "right" to drive any kind of ridiculous gas guzzler that they may want to have--or is that reserved just for selfish Americans?

[freeinalaska]

Originally Posted by WisJim

There are billions of Chinese and Indians who also "deserve" the "right" to drive any kind of ridiculous gas guzzler that they may want to have--or is that reserved just for selfish Americans?

You just do not see one person in an SUV commuting 30 miles to work in China or India. The only SUVs I rode in in China were company vehicles equiped with a driver and filled to capacity. Your average Chinese or Indian worker bicycles or takes public transportation. This includes educated professionals such as the telecom engineers I worked with in both China and India, as well as many other Asian countries. Even most European countries have way fewer gas guzzlers on the roads than the US.

I would have to say that the US has the market share on gas guzzling SUV's.

[donsgal]

Originally Posted by freeinalaska

You just do not see one person in an SUV commuting 30 miles to work in China or India. The only SUVs I rode in in China were company vehicles equiped with a driver and filled to capacity. Your average Chinese or Indian worker bicycles or takes public transportation. This includes educated professionals such as the telecom engineers I worked with in both China and India, as well as many other Asian countries. Even most European countries have way fewer gas guzzlers on the roads than the US.

I would have to say that the US has the market share on gas guzzling SUV's.

I'd love to see those Chinese fellers bringing home half a dozen 2X4's on those bicycles!

Actually, India has the highest death rate in the world from automobile accidents.

What irritates me is that companies such as Ford, Chevy, etc., have these incredibly teeny cars in europe that you cannot buy here in the US. I would buy a teeny car for bopping around town (when I am not hauling 2X4's). Yes we have the Aveo and Scion but their mileage isn't THAT great in the grand scheme of things.

donsgal

[DixyDoodle]

Public transportation is great---if you don't live a half hour or more away from your workplace. Here in Canada, you don't see too many people using a bicycle or moped in the wintertime in 2 feet of snow and with a -45C windchill blowing in your face. Then add having to pick up small children from school, getting groceries for four or more family members, hauling work supplies (a trunkful) around, etc, etc.

OR I could move to town, live in an apartment, and have to buy more groceries because I can't have a garden or livestock. Oh, and probably use more resouces like oil for my furnace or electricity for heat registers because I can't cut down those free trees from my back forty anymore to use in my woodstove.

DD

[e.alleg]

The part of the story I missed is where the government uses 500,000 eggs an hour to keep the war machine running plus 50000 eggs a day for "strategic reserve" which creates a demand that is greater than the supply. I won't go on a rant here but it is never mentioned in the news how much oil the United States Military uses on a daily basis. The SUV drivers aren't driving up the price of gas, it's the Stealth fighter squadrons that use 100 gallons a minute.

[Unregistered]

The amount of gas you use can be a lot less if you drive a little slower. Get up a little earlier to go to work and drive a little slower. You will have a surprise the next time you gas up.